


What You Ask the Waters Deep

by smallashes



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Introspection, Oneshot, Pre-Series, prose poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-13 05:39:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16886658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallashes/pseuds/smallashes
Summary: For Flint came from the waters, as an answer to a prayer.





	What You Ask the Waters Deep

Send word to the sea, for he wishes to speak with her again. The one true land that knows no nation. The waters are free, when on an unmarked ship, and if you bargain with her she may bless your passage.

Some bargain still, to the waves and the deep. James believed, once, that the sea could be tamed, that a fleet of an empire could control its waters, that the flag was a bargain. He isn't sure where he once fell, where he falls now. Does it matter, the flag on his ship? The uniform on his back?

The sea knows no rulers. She knows no land. In her vastness, she consumes. In her virility, she gives.

Flint knows no land but the sea. He was born from the waters, and James hopes he will die there too. Flint climbed onto the ship in the waves, just as his grandfather told him, and joined him there at sea. A man made from a bargain. A gift from her to aid in passage.

Send word to the sea again, for James must return Flint to her waters. But his voyage is not over, his war not yet waged. Still, he wishes for peace when Flint is at the helm. The waters bend too easily to Flint; James’ knowledge too far steeped in the years he spent in the navy. The taste of his victories only grows more bitter with time.

What life could he have had? What history would remember him?

The sea has no sovereign. She has no favours, no debts. She is cruel in her indifference, loving in her freedom.

James Flint, atop the _Walrus_ in the dead of night by the ever-shifting seas, wonders how far she will take him to war. He wonders, with the blood of Alfred Hamilton still on his hands, how much blood she craves from him before she will accept Flint back to her waters.

**Author's Note:**

> SOME EXAM SEASON WORD VOMIT
> 
> please enjoy  
> (and also check out [the anthology i'm in!!](https://queenofswordspress.com/product/scourge-of-the-seas-of-time-and-space/) black sails made me want to write more drasio c:)


End file.
